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The precious metal that the former guerrilla gave to repair the victims, plus the one that the Prosecutor’s Office seized from him, will be auctioned this Tuesday in Medellín. By provision of the SAE, only international companies may participate with the aim of avoiding money laundering operations.
This Tuesday, December 15, at 10 in the morning, the Special Assets Society (SAE) will hold an unprecedented auction for this entity in Medellín: 208,191.22 grams of gold that the former Farc delivered in the inventory of goods that they sent to the United Nations Special Mission between July and August 2017, or that the Prosecutor’s Office took away from them to initiate processes for the extinction of ownership. Custody over the precious metal was lifted only one day before, and the ingots were transported from the Banco de la República, where they were heavily guarded, to the place indicated by the contractor that helped SAE in this matter to verify their weight and purity of gold. (“All the inventory of goods we had was delivered”: FARC)
The FARC inventory was a bitter controversy at the time. In it the ex-guerrillas included not only gold or dollars, whose monetization is evident, but also pots, mills to make chocolate, fruit salt, rags, brooms, even lemons, or works such as “improvement of the aqueduct” or “micro-soccer field. ”. They even provided rural roads. At the time, the FARC explained that they delivered all those elements because they had done in many places what the State had not wanted. In contrast, the attorney general at the time, Néstor Humberto Martínez, told the government that if the inventory was not more specific, the prosecutor’s office would not be able to do its job.
Then, in 2018, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) were involved in a major dispute, precisely, for the assets of the Farc. In June of that year, the Investigation and Indictment Unit of the JEP requested precautionary measures for the assets that were part of the inventory of the defunct guerrilla, which they handed over to the UN under the name of “War economy.” The Unit, basically, wanted the properties that the FARC handed over – and even those that the Prosecutor’s Office had taken from it on account of its own investigations – to be frozen and to guarantee that their monetization would go to the victims. (Farc delivered the first list of goods)
The problem with this position, and this was claimed by the Néstor Humberto Martínez Prosecutor’s Office, was that the investigative body wanted to subject all that it had managed to take from the Farc, as indicated by the laws in force. In this way, the assets would end up in the hands of the SAE, which makes them money (by selling or leasing them, when possible) and gives them to the Frisco (Fund for Rehabilitation, Social Investment and Fight against Organized Crime), which in turn, it passes the resources, among others, to the Judicial Branch and to the Prosecutor’s Office itself for the fight against organized crime.
The list of goods didn’t just include things as ethereal as roads. There were also more than 240,000 hectares, cattle, horses and more than $ 16.00 billion that were kept in creeks. There were also US $ 450,000, which the SAE sold in December 2018 to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States (US $ 1,500 were false). The fight of the Martinez Prosecutor’s Office was for the assets seized by that entity, according to Martinez, valued at about $ 2 billion. The Constitutional Court was in charge of settling the discussion and, in March 2019, decided that the Prosecutor’s Office was the ideal entity to issue precautionary measures on assets in the process of extinction of ownership.
Given that this is the first time that the SAE undertakes a task of this magnitude, it was necessary to open a public tender to find an ally, a company that had experience in the international commercialization of gold and that could help him achieve foreign firms that were interested in buying this precious metal that the former guerrilla gave as part of their assets to repair the victims. The company that won the contest was Comercializadora Internacional Meprecol, a Colombian organization founded in 2006 by mining producers from Chocó and that also works with platinum. (Trapers, fruit salt and ‘talks’, among the assets of the Farc to compensate victims)
The gold that once belonged to the Farc could end up in the hands of companies from England, the United States, Italy, India and the United Arab Emirates, which are the ones that, until now, have shown interest in buying this metal. Thus, the money received for 197,286.96 grams of fine gold will go directly to the reparation of the victims, since it is the one that the FARC themselves delivered in 2017. The rest, 10,904.26, will go to Frisco, which It must by law allocate these resources as follows: 25% for the Judicial Branch, 25% for the investigative body itself – as the Néstor Humberto Martínez Prosecutor’s Office fought – and the remaining 50% for the Government.
